


The Red Comes With It

by the_most_beautiful_broom



Series: Season 5 Fix-its [4]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Slight but they're there, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-20
Updated: 2018-06-20
Packaged: 2019-05-25 21:16:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14985743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_most_beautiful_broom/pseuds/the_most_beautiful_broom
Summary: Raven helps -- or tries to help -- Zeke clean up after 5x07





	The Red Comes With It

**Author's Note:**

> if you haven't watched the ep yet, there are some spoilers herein.

“Don’t.”

Zeke says it without opening his eyes, without turning over his shoulder to look at her, and Raven’s step slows.

For a moment, she wonders how he recognized her footstep, then realizes that the limp is probably as good a giveaway as any. But since he knows it’s her, she resumes, stepping around to the other side of the pew in the church, hesitating for a moment before lowering herself next to him.

Not _next to_ next to him, just next to.

He still slides away.

Even as he grimaces with the movement, his breath catching in a hiss as broken ribs and broken skin protest, he moves away from her.

Raven’s hands clench and she doesn’t realize what a stupid thing that is to do, until Zeke looks over at the sound of water hitting the floor, her balled fists wringing the water out of the damp towel she’d brought over.

“Um,” she mutters, wishing she’d paid a little more attention when Clarke did things like this, “here.”

But when she moves to offer him the towel, the motion stilted and sudden, he flinches.

Guilt washes over Raven, wave after wave of it ramming into her.

Maybe she hadn’t had a choice and maybe it was his well-being versus her friends’ lives. But maybe she could’ve done something more, could’ve defied Echo, could’ve faked like she was locked out. If she’d have thought faster, been quicker, then maybe they wouldn’t be here now. His blood wouldn’t be seeping into the pew and she wouldn’t have to think about how his every shaky breath hurt because of her.

The water drips onto the pew, but Zeke doesn’t move.

Raven steels herself, then properly looks over at him.

His nose is broken. Pretty emphatically, too, and his lip is busted completely. The blood has dried around his mouth, cracked under his nose from every time he winces. There are massive welts on his cheekbones and Raven feels sick because those marks weren’t made by fists. She can see the outline of the unforgiving ends of rifles, battered up his cheeks and over one of his ears. His eyes are almost swollen shut, and she watches his lashes flutter as he realizes she’s studying him.

“Admiring your handiwork?”

He asks it in a voice that she doesn’t recognize, raw and grating, like he held back sounds for a while and now his throat has to remember how to let words pass through it.

Raven’s arm wavers with the weight of the towel, and she looks away sharply. Her first instinct is to think that she doesn’t deserve that, but then it settles that she really does.

She shakes the towel slightly. “It’s not much of a white flag,” she tries, hesitantly.

Zeke still doesn’t look at her, but she can see his jaw clench.

“So, just out of curiosity,” he says, and the crease in his brow deepens, “When did you decide you were going to sell me out to Diyoza?”

Raven bites her lip, letting the arm with the towel drop to the pew. “I didn’t—”

“Was it before or after we let Murphy go?” he interrupts her, still not looking, but his voice gaining strength. “Was this a part of the plan that he was supposed to like?”

And she wants to protest that that’s not fair, of course she didn’t plan this, but then he’s bleeding and broken because of her, so how is she supposed to believe that.

“Not then?” he asks, shoulder lifting in a shrug that she knows has to hurt, but he doesn’t seem to notice. “Okay, then maybe it was when you found out about tether on the shock collar?”

Raven shakes her head, mute, not knowing where to begin.

“Oh, okay, not then either,” Zeke says, bitterness lacing his voice. “When I said I couldn’t help you with whatever plan your spy was cooking up?”

“She’s not a spy—” Raven begins, and Zeke huffs at that, a laugh completely devoid of humor.

“Sure,” he mutters, “add that to a list of lies you’re spinning.”

For a moment, they’re quiet, and Raven closes her eyes.

“Look,” she says carefully, “I didn’t know that Echo was going to—”

“You didn’t know?” he asks, incredulous, and Raven can feel him looking at her. She opens her eyes and looks over to find him; she can’t read his expression. “You hack my ship out from underneath me, you get me to release your friend, and you expect me to believe you didn’t know her hand?”

Raven looks away sharply because there it is, the reminder that she should’ve done better.

“I didn’t,” she says softly, truthfully, not sure if that’s worth anything.

“Yeah, well,” Zeke looks away, she feels his eyes leaving her, “here we are anyways.”

Silence again.

The defectors are stirring around the church, murmuring to each other, babbling. Everyone steers clear of their pew but Raven can feel their curiosity. They know the pilot and they know her; she doubts they know that they have a traitor in their midst, and it’s not the Eligius man. It’s almost funny, that it’s the prisoner who tried to do the right thing, and the girl with the burn marks who betrayed him. 

“It had to have been after the collars then,” Zeke says, slowly, contemplatively, and it takes Raven a minute to realize what he means.

“I told you already,” she tries, “I swear, I didn’t—”

“No,” Zeke says, like it all makes sense and he should’ve seen it coming, “It had to be then. Whatever image you had of me was wrecked when you found out about the truth of the miners.”

“What,” Raven interjects, cutting him off for once, “that you chose the lives of your crew over someone else’s orders?”

She knows a thing or two about that.

“That I’m a killer,” Zeke continues without missing a beat, “and once you knew that, it was all too easy to turn me over.”

“That’s not what happened—”

“Sorry,” his voice is anything but contrite, “my eyes are a little swollen at the moment; it must be hard to see the _goodness_ in them now.”

His words land hard and Raven drops the towel, her hands coming up to press over her eyes. She slides them back to her hairline, letting out a shaking breath, settling her elbows on her knees and leaning into them.

“Zeke,” she says finally, looking at the ground because it’s easier than the broken man next to her. And she hates that that makes her a coward, that she can’t face him and he won’t look at her and she doesn’t deserve for him to, and she doesn’t know how to even begin to make this right. “I promise, I didn’t mean for this…for any of this…especially this…”

She trails off, knowing it’s not an actual apology, but needing for him to say something.

Of course, he won’t.

And suddenly, she’s angry.

At Echo, for forcing her make that call, at herself for making it, at Zeke for not being the callous pilot that she needed him to be to get her friends out of this alive, and then at herself again, for not thinking of a way to save him and them, and actually saving none of them.

“Just take the damn towel,” she says, hearing the sharpness mingled with exhaustion on her voice, raking her hands through her hair to pretend she’s unaffected.

She can almost hear Zeke thinking, wondering where her mind has just gone, but he doesn’t move.

“Why?” he asks after a beat, voice low, “Squeamish?”

Before she can think it through, she reaches up to her neck, scraping the collar above the skin, tearing open the burns that’ve just begun to heal, raising her chin and staring him down. She feels the heat in her eyes and it’s stronger than the bitter sting of her neck, and Zeke’s jaw clenches when his eyes involuntarily drop to the marks there.

“I don’t know,” she says, in a voice that drips like acid, “Squeamish?”

He looks away first, but it doesn’t feel like a victory.

Raven settles back, elbows on her knees and body bent. Zeke is still stiff beside her, and she’s fairly certain that’s a matter of pain minimization rather than comfort.

“So, what,” he asks after a moment, “are we even now?”

Raven shakes her head at the floor. “It’s not the same.”

He seems to think that over, for a moment, his head falling back again. “Yeah,” he mutters, “McCreary wasn’t here for mine.”

That’s not what she meant, and they both know it.

She thinks about saying it, or something flippant like _you’re welcome_ , but neither seems right. “I mean it,” she mutters instead, “take the towel.”

He hesitates, but then he does.

For a moment, she’s relieved, watching in her peripherals as his shoulders sag at the first press of the cool cloth against his skin. He holds it under his nose, nodding slightly when he pulls it back and the white of it is flecked with red. Then he moves up to his cheeks, just holding the cloth there like a compress, soothing the throbbing skin. Same over his forehead, scraping blood off of cuts and pressing the cold wetness over wounds that are deeper than the skin. Then he’s down past his chin, where the blood is caked above the collar and it isn’t easy at coming away.

Before either of them realize it, he’s practically clawing at his throat, fervidly scrubbing, the rough fabric raw against his neck.

Before either of them realize it, she’s on her feet and reaching for the towel, pulling it away from him, stopping his frenzied path with her hands.

Before either of them realize it, they’re close, closer than they’ve ever been.

They both seem to freeze, eyes travelling up from the bloody cloth to long fingers, then up forearms, past collars, up to meet each other.

Then his eyes fall to her neck, and hers to his nose, and each time they look there’s more broken skin, more fresh blood, more scars and more pain, and more and more.

And what’s there to say?

Raven swallows slowly and Zeke shifts; she moves slightly forward when his knees part. He licks his lips and Raven folds the towel, the stains inside and the outside of it clean, softer.

His eyes flutter shut when she presses the cloth against his neck again. Leaves it there, soaking, holding her breath and pretending not to notice that his has caught. After a minute, she lifts it, and the red comes with it.

She works around the collar.

Then up his neck.

To the stain of blood he missed, trickling from his ear. To the spots he couldn’t have guessed, the stubborn spot in the dip above his lip. Around his nose. Up his cheeks, over his browbone, careful of his nose.

At some point, she realizes his eyes have opened again, and he’s watching her face intently.

At some point, he realizes that her free hand has settled on his shoulder to steady herself.

At some point, the towel will be more red than white, heavy, and the water that runs down Raven’s arm is tinged red.  His face will be as clean then, the only marks remaining, the kind that take weeks and months to erase. If ever. Her leg will protest at the odd angle and the balance it’s forced to give her and she’ll step back, step away. His hand will steady her as she goes, and she’ll look at him questioningly when he lingers on her hip for a moment longer than necessary.

It’s inevitable.

But for now, she feels the steadiness of him under one hand, and the fragility of him under the other. For now, he reads the determination in her eyes, the honesty there, and the gentleness of her hand behind the towel. For now, they push back the inevitable, make peace with the broken, and don’t question the carefulness that might just be caring, in between them.  


End file.
